ADDA Simfonica with Irene Theorin under Josep Vicent in Strauss and Shostakovich

 

Concerts seasons often parade a procession of “great works” calculated to promote ticket sales. Anything less well known is often regarded as risky because audiences, though they tend not to know what they like, always like what they know. Performances of great works often become mundane acknowledgments of the work’s existence, without getting to grips with its substance. Audiences go home happy, ticket sales are satisfactory, and the works of thousands of composers never see the light of day.

So would the program of the Four Last songs of Richard Strauss followed by Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony fall into this perfunctory category? It might. But in Alicante’s ADDA concert hall last night, it definitely did not. Indeed, this is never the case when it comes to the playing and interpretation of ADDA Simfònica under Josep Vicent. Last night, the audience was surely in the presence of living greatness, not just past achievement. During last week, I met a friend whom I knew would also be going to hear the music and expressed the opinion that Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony was a life-changer. I understated the reality. And you might be wondering why a concert review opens like this… I hope to make that clear later. First, the facts.

The hall was packed to hear Iréne Theorin sing the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss and the ADDA Simfònica under artistic director Josep Vicent play the symphony. To say that this audience loves its resident orchestra would also be an understatement. Every player is applauded onto the stage and off it, every time. This adoration is individual recognition, communally expressed, of both the work the orchestra does in presenting taxing programmes and also the quality of the experience they regularly deliver. ADDA Simfònica is now a great orchestra, and their artistic director is the leading light.

We began last night with Richard Strauss’s songs, with Iréne Theorin as soloist. The opening phrases might have suggested that she might have a little too much vibrato for this work, but like many initial fears this proved groundless. This is a work that needs control and expression, rather than power or decoration, and Iréne Theorin not only delivered, she excelled. There was a slight surprise when at the end of the fourth song, when the valedictory trills on the flute were played rather softer than is often the case. In the context of the work, this low-key wave of goodbye fitted perfectly. It is not surprising, given the soloist’s experience in performing the music of Richard Strauss that Iréne Theorin’s interpretation proved nothing less than exceptional. We did have an encore. It was one of Strauss’s orchestral songs, which ultimately gave Iréne Theorin an opportunity to demonstrate a little of her power.

And then what more can be written about this symphony? Let’s take for granted that it was played wonderfully, was interpreted to perfection and was received in absolute silence with every note absorbed by its audience.

For me personally, the opening movement has a clear programme. The complexity and sophistication of ordinary life in Leningrad is portrayed in the opening section in music that regularly changes key and rhythm. The simple message of the opposing theme portrays the idea of fascism. Keep it simple and keep saying the same thing. People will believe you. It starts small, indeed it does. But with each new adherent, the ideology grows into something that creates a powerful need to impose itself on everything. Ideologically this is the fascism of the 1930s. Musically, it is the ideology of pop, being populism, not popularity. That comes later. Just try getting away from pop music… And, I might add, I don’t mean Indian pop, or Tanzanian pop. I mean an international pop, nearly always in sung in English, where the visuals trump the aurals. Here I return to the idea at the start of the piece, because it is a marketing necessity that the product should always be presented that way. Make sure there are no surprises, and then you will not offend. And you will sell more worthless product.

At the end of the first movement, after the idea of fascism has led to huge conflict, the sophisticated life of those who don’t want everything to be the same returns, but it is exhausted. Though the movement ends lyrically, the fascist tendency is still there, perhaps in the form of a dictator, perhaps acknowledging that this desire to impose the conformity of a group is part of us all. At the end of the symphony, when the triumphal but unconvincing fanfares ring out, proclaiming what is clearly a rather hollow victory, the memory of conflict, complete with its conformity-imposing mechanical rhythm is still there. But is it now at least the rhythm of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth?

The symphony’s central movements are full of reflection, lyricism, nostalgia, desolation and nightmare. It is an acknowledgment of the excellent design of the ADDA hall to record that even pianissimo pizzicati can be heard anywhere. We assume, of course, as ever, that there is near total silence from the audience. There always is.

My introduction of the work to the work came from Leonard Bernstein’s CBS recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Throughout, he uses significantly slower tempi than we heard last night. It’s a different take on what is, after all, a personal experience. On this recording, there is a moment during the first movement, when the sophistication of the people returns after the war, after the exhaustion is expressed and the desolation is recorded, when the sophistication represented by the strings returns with renewed but exhausted energy. On the recording, just before this entry, Bernstein issues a long side of relief which was picked up by the microphones. Personally, I cannot listen to this music without hearing that unscored sigh. I heard the reissue of the same recording a few weeks ago, and the engineers have removed the sigh.

At the start of the symphony last night, Josep Vicent decided to project images of the siege of Leningrad on the backdrop, closing the sequence with a statement that there were currently fifty conflicts in the world and that collectively we wanted to be ambassadors of peace. I said earlier that the Leningrad Symphony is a life-changer, and it still is, no matter how many times it is heard. Let’s put the people back into music, no matter how much we crave standardized products. Experience is unique. And this one was no exception. And it will live a lifetime.

Something special - Pablo González, Francesco Piemontesi and the Dresden Philharmonic in Beethoven and Strauss

Something special was experienced by the ADDA audience last night. On the face of it, the concert was almost conventional, as concerts sometimes can appear on paper. There was to be a Beethoven piano concerto followed by a Richard Strauss tone poem, it all sounded possibly a little run-of-the-mill. But don’t be fooled by appearances. This was undoubtedly something special.

Let’s start with Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto as interpreted by Francesco Piemontesi. As the program notes underlined, this work was Beethoven’s big break with the past, at least, as far as his concerto writing was concerned. This work was not to follow the eighteenth-century model of elegance before challenge. This third piano concerto of Beethoven has a really symphonic feel. The dialogue between the soloist and orchestra, contrasts strongly, here argumentative, here supportive.

And Francesco Piemontesi’s playing, brought out all the subtleties, without once resorting to gimmick or bravura. What was obvious from the opening orchestral passage to the work’s end was a sense of cooperation between the soloist and orchestra, a sense of communication and sharing, despite, on occasions, the music demanding, strong contrast. Francesco Piemontesi gave a brilliant performance, topped by a significant encore.

The orchestra was the Dresden Philharmonic, under the baton of Pablo González. Unusually Pablo González opened the second half with a short verbal presentation about Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. The work is clearly something special in the eyes of Pablo González. He described it as at least one of the greatest of all musical creations. And he stressed that this was not the Richard Strauss Don Quixote, although he went on to describe the piece as surreal and satirical, both of which might apply to the way a modern mind appreciates Cervantes’s novel.

And the performance was indeed something special. This is a piece that orchestras often play as if it were a gymnastics exercise. But here the romanticism and lyricism were stressed, and the music flowed rather than exploded. Here we had pauses to emphasize transitions, changes in dynamics that brought out all the textures in this multi-layered work. And we really did hear all the complexity of the aural colours that this great work projects.

As an encore, Luis Alonso got married again. This quintessence of popular Spanish music brought the house down.

 

Jesús Reina, Pierre Bleuse and ADDA Alicante in Ravel, Strauss and Mozart

For the third time this season, Alicante’s ADDA audience heard a major piece by Richard Strauss. The Violin Concerto is an early work, written when the young man was a teenager and still searching for a mature voice. As a consequence, it does remind one of Brahms, Mendelssohn here and there, amongst others.

But its overall conception is quite different. For a start, there is no obvious cadenza. Even at sixteen years of age, Richard Strauss was trying to write a concerto where soloist and orchestra were to combine to deliver an integrated musical experience. This was never conceived as a vehicle to allow a soloist merely to show off. And so it needs to be performed cooperatively, with the soloist always mindful of the orchestra’s contribution.

On this occasion, the soloist was Jesús Reina, a musician who devotes much of his time to playing chamber music in small ensembles. If anyone would be sympathetic to this need for integration, then, surely, he would be. The audience was not to be disappointed. He was so completely sympathetic to the orchestra’s role that he often turned during the time when he was not contributing to face the orchestra and actually listen to what they were playing. The result was a truly integrated work, with a musical argument coming to the fore. Pierre Bleuse’s direction also allowed the perfect balance to develop.

The concert had begun with the orchestral version of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Now this work is often played almost as if it were conceived as an eighteenth-century concerto grosso, rather than an homage to the form from the point of view of a twentieth century composer.

This performance crafted by Pierre Bleuse was different. The shape was still there, but the hard, staccato edges seem to be softened. The strings seem to be offering commentaries rather than statements. The result was a beautifully balanced, surprising and thoroughly post-impressionist, twentieth century piece. It paid homage to the past while saying something quite new. It is such a familiar piece, but what a surprise!

Mozart’s G Minor Symphony occupied the second half of the concert. It is hard to find anything new to say about the work, but it is also a work that does not need novelty. It is so well crafted, so perfectly conceived, that it makes its own points every time it is played.

Pierre Bleuse’s direction brought out every aspect of Mozart’s score. It was serious, threatening, lyrical, playful, and always inventive. A real treat brought the evening to a close in the shape of Chabrier’s Habañera, a surprisingly subtle an interesting little piece. Another surprise!

Stefanie Irany, Josep Vicent and ADDA orchestra in Strauss, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky

Programa

Richard Strauss, Muerte y Transfiguración Op.24 23:00

Hector Berlioz, La muerte de Cleopatra 22:00

 I. C’en est donc fait! 03:00

 II. Ah! Qu’ils sont loin 07:00

 III. Méditation: Grand Pharaons 05:00

 IV. Non!...non, de vos demeures funèbres 03:00

V. Dieux du Nil 04:00

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sinfonía núm. 6 Op.74 46:00

I.                    Adagio -Allegro non troppo 18:00

II.                 II. Allegro con grazia 08:00

III.              III. Allegro molto vivace 09:00

IV.              IV. Finale: Adagio lamentoso 11:00

A new season brings an array of new faces. The composers and the works have figured before on programmes throughout the world. But one of the joys of music is that in performance it has the capacity to be different and fresher with each new hearing.

Personally, I cannot remember having heard The Death of Cleopatra in concert. I only recently became aware of the work via a broadcast recording. Now Berlioz is one of those composers who nearly always fails to impress me. The works come with a reputation for experiment, even overstatement, but too often I have found performances very much “of their time”. The fault, I now think, lay with the listener, who was always rather dismissive of this composer’s unique achievement. I realised my folly last night, sitting in the audience, as Stefanie Iranyi gave a spine-chilling performance of the work in front of Alicante’s ADDA Orchestra.

This music, so full of drama and expression, was also highly surprising. It turned unexpectedly, produced unfamiliar harmonies that seemed to communicate perfectly a sense of antiquity both beyond reach and understanding. It might have been because the ADDA audience was invited to participate in the story via projected text on the back of the stage. Line by line, the words appeared as they were sung, so we were able to share the drama and emotion of the piece more directly than if we had to read and follow the sound. Also, Stefanie Iranyi gave a thoroughly operatic performance which almost brought the ancient queen back to life.

Before the Berlioz, we had been treated to a performance of Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, a young man’s take on an imagined end of life. We were told in the programme that Strauss himself on his deathbed told onlookers that he had got it right all those years ago. Apocryphal or not, the young man’s take was ultimately positive, since the apotheosis of the piece is to find peace. Whether that peace was eternal or blissful, or just piecemeal, we will see. I am always impressed at the range and depth of sound that Richard Strauss could get from and orchestra.

And so to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, The Pathetique. I suppose there was a macabre thread running through the programme – death, death and death - but in Tchaikovsky’s case, the jury is still out as to whether the work is some form of suicide note.

It is a work that simply grows and grows. The more exposure to this symphony one has, at least in the concert hall, the better it gets. This is a work of profound intellect, great emotion and wondrous technique, both with the orchestra and with the structure of the piece. Personally, I could not care if Tchaikovsky did not follow the precise rigours of sonata form. By the 1890s he had clearly transcended such things. He had already become the kind of individual voice that would populate the twentieth century. It is just a pity that he never made it that far and more of a pity that the society that surrounded him had attitudes that were backward looking. And has anyone ever written an emotional leap like the one that happens between the last bars of the third movement and the opening of the fourth?

And what about the end of the work, with that repeated motif in the double basses? Did not Shostakovich use the same idea – even almost he same music! – at the end of the infamous fourth? It would be stupid to suggest that some music might be ahead of its time.

Folk song, dance and ritual - ADDA Simfonica with Ramon Tebar and Juan Perez Floristan

 

In another loosely themed concert, ADDA Simfonica played four works written in the forty years that spanned the dawn of the twentieth century. In different ways, these works address religious, folk and popular culture from central and eastern Europe, though the range of styles may have obscured whatever thematic links that may have cemented them. Under guest conductor Ramon Tebar, the ADDA orchestra opened the concert with the Russian Easter Festival Overture by Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer’s idea was to synthesize popular religiosity with the theatre to arouse feelings of nationalism. And so in an overture that lasts a quarter of an hour, the composer displays great technical prowess without really exploring many musical ideas. The playing was superb, the material less so.

The Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodaly were both personal friends and musical collaborators. They set out at the start of the twentieth century to note down and thus preserve the nation’s folk music, specifically the rural peasant songs that were likely to disappear under the tide of modernization. Both composers used much of the material they collected in their own compositions, sometimes literally via quotation and sometimes, especially in Bartok’s case, by implication via the extraction of a musical language. Thus the harmonies, scales and sometimes the themes themselves appear in the music.

Bartok’s first piano concerto is not overtly folkloric. It’s a work of the 1920s, written to provide a vehicle for the composer’s own playing, but also to allow him to clarify the stylistic character of his compositional style, which was a rejection of romanticism, atonality and neoclassicism. Bartok wanted to unite the discipline of Bach with the structure of Beethoven and the harmony of Debussy. But he wanted to achieve this using some of the tools he had wrought from the folklore tradition.

The result was a rhythmic, percussive First Piano Concerto that makes massive demands on the soloist. Some approach the work as if it were a gymnastic challenge, where the goal is the completion of the exercise merely without fault. But this concerto needs a soloist who can not only rise to the challenge but also interpret the nuances, register the contrasts. Juan Perez Floristan did that very well. Overall, the reading of the work, however, seemed to this listener to duck the opportunities to vary the tempi and the loosen the rhythms, thus losing any sense of jazz, which I personally think enhances this music. I admit that this criticism is nit-picking, however. The Debussy Prelude, the Girl With The Flaxen Hair was as Juan Perez Floristan pointed out, in keeping with the evening’s theme.

Zoltan Kodaly dealt with the folklore influences more literally than Bartok. His oft-performed work, Dances of Galanta, was inspired by a gypsy band in his hometown. The work’s five sections are played without a break and the music speeds up towards a breathless and spectacular conclusion. On this occasion witnessed some beautiful orchestral playing.

And speaking of beauty, what can match Richard Strauss’s music to Der Rosenkavalier? The music is obviously thicker in texture than what had gone before and it differed in being based on popular dance than on folkloric influence. From the first notes, there was suddenly more space in the music. The effect, of course, was deliberately theatrical and lusciously so.

The ADDA orchestra played the work expertly and allowed the humanity of the music to shine through its obviously technical demands. The solo contributions were faultless but what shone the brightest were the beautiful string tones that this orchestra now achieves. Der Rosenkavalier is a work that takes the process of human relationships seriously, whilst apparently dismissing their overall importance. What is important now will not seem will not cause the blink of an eye by tomorrow, or maybe in an hour. Enjoy what life presents and enjoy it now. But for many in this audience, the sheer beauty of this music will be an enduring experience.

Costa Blanca Arts Update - Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky in Alicante's ADDA

 

Two concerts on consecutive days might be considered by some as a live event to far, especially when the concerts feature big, autobiographical works, one of which at least is widely regarded as difficult. But these two events in Alicante delivered by the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev seemed to make light of the challenge and on both occasions an eager and adoring audience could easily have taken more.

A Friday night program was clearly constructed to show off this magnificent orchestra. We began with Wagner’s Prelude and Good Friday Music from Parsifal. Despite the composer’s reputation for excess, Parsifal, his last opera, is largely contemplative, slow, controlled and unspectacular. The forces are large, but the control is larger and allowed this superb orchestra to generate beautiful, luscious textures within the balance, sounds that give away the sensual aspects of this piece, all encased in an apparently single-minded religious devotion.

The program then offered Prokofiev’s classical symphony. Now this work is conceived as a neo-classical re-visitation of the world of Haydn and Mozart. But, despite its logistically small scale, musically it is sophisticated, often complex, a surreal view of the apparently literal. Throughout, this work’s beautiful interlinking string lines were completely clear, whist remaining integrated in the whole. The resulting surprising harmonies blended to a convincing transformation of world we once thought familiar and the always arresting rhythms were allowed to fight it out.

After the interval this audience was treated to a completely virtuosic performance of Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss. Now by definition and intention this music is autobiographical. This is the already successful Richard Strauss showing off. The piece is almost self-promotion, a brilliant succession of tableaux illustrating his claim to be able to do a multitude of things, including the deferral ad infinitum of an obvious cadence. It is also full of self-quotation from a career that had already flourished, despite the fact that there was a considerable amount yet to come from this composer who was only in his mid-forties. It is a poet’s statement, says its title, but the self-knowledge here is far from analytical. This is undoubtedly a work that demands complete mastery from the partnership that is conductor and orchestra, and this particular performance excelled. We were treated to an encore, a Strauss waltz, no relation.

Our second concert of this mini-series featured a single work, if the word single can be applied to the vast complexity of the fourth symphony of Shostakovich, which calls for more than a hundred performers. My personal take on this music is that it is also autobiographical, taking its listeners from birth to a question-marked death, eventually accompanied by the same faltering heartbeat in the basses that signs off Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique.

Autobiographical it may be, but here we are imagining a life yet to be lived by a composer in his thirties. Unlike the Strauss, here the process seems to be highly analytical and, crucially different from Strauss’s self-adulation, the internally reflective process of Shostakovich’s fourth symphony seems to lack confidence. To clarify, this lack of surety has nothing to do with compositional ability, nothing at all to do with an inability to express, and even less to do with the obvious technical mastery that the composer brought to his handling of the orchestra. But in this piece Shostakovich seemed to be conscious of pushing the limits. If only I might express myself, this is what I would like to say. If only I had the space…

Well, we know now that Shostakovich did not have the space and that he withdrew the work and waited twenty-five years before he heard it played, when times were marginally easier for artists. One is left reflecting what the composer might have written subsequently if the work had been allowed its original space. It is paradoxical that his best loved symphony in the West remains the fifth, a work in which he self-corrected the “excesses” that had preceded it. By a quirk of programming, perhaps by design, the next concert in ADDA will feature the fifth.

The forces required were obviously too great for a touring orchestra to muster and so the numbers were made up by incorporating several members of ADDA’s resident orchestra. The achievement of this ad hoc combination was nothing less than breath-taking. This is perhaps one of the most difficult of all works to interpret and yet, despite the scratch team, the performance was nothing less than faultless. Gergiev’s tempi were quite fast in movements two and three, which increases demands of cohesion amongst the strings, a challenge that these players met as if they had played together all their lives.

The fourth symphony takes its audience to some scary places. Even when we waltz, we feel we are looking over our shoulders, and even when we go to the circus, we are watching our back. The heartbeat is permanent, however, and we know we are alive throughout. When, late on, we look back on our achievements, the climax is vast, but the sensation is hollow. There are still things we have not said, and the apparent pride is unconvincing.

But the magnificence of the final questioned peace is undiminished. The heart may falter and the body decline, but eventually we are what we are, nothing more. And that is probably when we realise we control precisely nothing and that what went before may as well have been a dream. Sounds like Shakespeare.

I have written of the work elsewhere, but this live performance, only the second one I have had the privilege to attend, confirms in my own mind a personal view that this work, the Symphony Number Four of Dmitri Shostakovich, is nothing less than the greatest single work of art the human race has thus far produced. Okay, I will tone down the superlatives: it is the human race’s greatest artwork that I personally have encountered. And this performance did it more than justice.

Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers by Paul Rosenfeld

 

Tastes change. Fashions change. Presumptions, through whose refracting prisms each new age interprets its aesthetics, also change, but usually unpredictably because we absorb the restrictions without being conscious of their control. It’s probably called culture, and perhaps we are all imprisoned by its inherently commercial pressure. And we only rarely perceive change in our ability to respond to stimuli, often surprisingly perceived when we remove our experience into a different culture, a different aesthetic and possibly another time. This is precisely why exploration of criticism from the past can be so rewarding and, in a way that the writing would never have achieved in its contemporary setting, challenging. It was this kind of experience that flowed from every page of Paul Rosenfeld’s Musical Portraits.

These “Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers” were published in 1920, having previously appeared as occasional pieces elsewhere. A hundred years on, of course, the first challenge is the meaning of the word “modern” in its title, especially when the presented list of composers starts with Wagner and finishes with Bloch. Personally, I have nothing against classifying Bloch as “modern” in the 1920s, but the inclusion of Wagner is surely pushing the definition, since he had already been dead for over 35 years.

Reading Rosenfeld’s text, however, one quickly understands Wagner‘s inclusion. For the writer, Wagner’s work created the cusp between the feudal and modern worlds. His stature and influence was still so great, his achievements still considered so monumental, that this work of critical appraisal just had to begin with his name. Rosenfeld sees his music dramas as manifestations of a new industrial age, reflecting the unprecedented might of the new coal-powered civilization.

Strauss, Richard, of course, comes next. Pure genius, he is judged, at least on the evidence of his early symphonic poems, which approached a realization of the Nietzschean dream via colours that suggested impressionist painting. By the time we reach Salome, however, he had become “a bad composer”, “once so electric, so vital, so brilliant a figure” had transformed into someone “dreary and outward and stupid”. Rosenkavalier is judged “singularly hollow and flat and dun, joyless and soggy”. One must recall that this was 1920 and that Richard Strauss still had over 20 years of creative life remaining.

Mussorgsky’s “marvelous originality” was an expression of the true nature of Russian folklore, culture and peasant life. Liszt, on the other hand, was offering work like “satin robes covering foul, unsightly rags”, “designed by the pompous and classicizing Palladio, but executed in stucco and other cheap materials”. The impression was vivid, but the substance close to zero.

Berlioz, on the other hand, had grown in stature. His music was judged barbarous and radical and revolutionary, “beside which so much modern music dwindles”. He was the first to write directly for the orchestra as an instrument.

Cesar Franck suffers the ignominy of having a good part of his section devoted discussions of Saint-Saens. He can be gratified, however, that the author judges his work greater than that of this more famous composer, who seemed to seek only an increase in opus numbers. Franck’s own music  is seen as an expression of the silent majority, those who feel “forsaken and alone and powerless”, the army of society’s workers. The basis for this is that Franck had himself to work for a living.

Claude Debussy, by contrast, already seems to Rosenfeld to have achieved the status of a god, so elevated by aesthetic and achievement from the rest of humanity that it could hardly be considered he had ever composed a bad note. The piano of this most perfect living musician, becomes “satins and liqueurs”, his orchestra sparkling “with iridescent fires ... delicate violets and argents and shades of rose”.

Ravel is something of a problem child, certainly impressive, but whose judgment is not quite trusted, no matter how engaging it might sound. “Permitted to remain, in all his manhood, the child that we all were”, he seems to receive a pat on the head to encourage him to try harder.

Borodin, a true proud nationalist, suffered from “flawed originality”. But his music, like an uncovered, uncut piece of porphyry or malachite is perfect in its natural, unpolished state. Rimsky-Korsakov, on the other hand, is merely decorative and graceful, but also vapid, whilst Rachmaninoff offered product that was “too smooth and soft and elegantly elegiac, simply too dull”. It was the music of the pseudo-French culture of the Saint Petersburg upper crust.

Scriabine, however, “awakened in the piano all of its latent animality”. He wrote music that “hovered on the borderland between ecstasy and suffering”, probably bitter-sweet to the layman. But Strawinsky was the ultimate realist. A product of industrialization, he produced “great weighty metallic masses, molten piles and sheets of steel and iron, shining adamantine bulks”. So real were the impressions in his music that one might even smell the sausages grilling at Petrushka’s fair.

Four contemporary “German” composers are thoroughly dismissed, Strauss being bankrupt, Reger grotesquely pedantic, Schoenberg intellectually tainted and Mahler banal, despite the fact that only two of the four were actually German. Specifically, Mahler’s scores were “lamentably weak, often arid and banal”. It seems that much of Rosenfeld’s criticism arises out of an inquisitorial distrust of Mahler’s sincerity in converting from Judaism. The music of Reger, the author judges, is unlikely to suffer a revival and the composer himself is described as being like a “swollen, myopic beetle, with thick lips and sullen expression, crouching on an organ bench”. Let us say no more. Schoenberg is a troubling presence, formalistic and intellectual. He smells of the laboratory and exists in an obedience to some abstract scholastic demand. We are still discussing music, by the way.

Sibelius personifies nationalism, Finnish nationalism, of course. As it emerges from its domination under the Russian yoke, Finnish identity suddenly realizes it has a beautiful landscapes, meadows and forests.

Loeffler, surprisingly, gets a full entry. Perhaps it has something to do with his opting to live in the United States. Ornstein will be a name that is perhaps unfamiliar to 21st-century music lovers. At the time he was a brilliant 25-year-old pianist who was embarking on the composition of tough, rugged scores. And finally Bloch is praised for introducing non-European and oriental influences into western music. He is praised for retaining his Jewish identity and culture, which suggests that Mahler might have got off with lighter criticism had he not rejected the faith and thus have allowed they author to note the similarity of that composer’s clarinet writing to klezmer.

Opinion in the words of Paul Rosenfeld often presents a florid display, mixing prejudice and observation, and pre-judgment with insight. He describes his appreciation of these twenty composers through the distorting lens of his own aesthetic, derived from the assumptions of his age. Reading this short, concentrated work, we soon appreciate that we are doing the same. Only the language and the presumptions are changed.